Finding Dory

A fish tale out of water

Grade: B

Director: Andrew Stanton

Starring the voices of: Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Hayden Rolence, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Idris Elba and Sigourney Weaver

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hr. 37 min.

It’s fitting that most of Finding Dory takes place in the fictional Marine Life Institute, a representation of ocean existence for the masses, overseen by the disembodied, omnipresent voice of a celebrity (Sigourney Weaver) and featuring such oxymorons as the “Open Ocean Exhibit.”

Finding Dory and its popular Pixar predecessor, Finding Nemo, are similarly pleasing, well-made mass productions that educate about marine life about as well as Gomer Pyle did about life in the Marine Corps. Sure, viewers might be introduced to the echolocation capabilities of a beluga whale, and the fact that an octopus has three hearts. But the lessons learned here are strictly human, and that’s where Pixar and Finding Dory flourish.

An opening origin vignette reveals that as a fish-ling, Dory (the film-carrying voice of Ellen DeGeneres) wandered away from her parents due to her chronic short-term memory loss. Now grown and living in her new aquatic home, she pesters neighbors Nemo (Hayden Rolence) and Marlin (Albert Brooks) at night and annoys a school class she tries to assist. When a faint echo of her mom and pop re-enter her minds, it prompts a search quest across the ocean to locate them. Dory is joined by Nemo and forever fussbudget Marlin, propelled by Dory’s gradual, convenient recollections, starting with the SeaWorld-esque park in Morro Bay, California where Dory was born.

As expected, the fun of Finding Dory is the eccentric creatures we meet along the way. Most memorable is Hank (Ed O’Neil), a camouflaging, contortionist octopus who believes helping Dory is his best bet to catch the next truck to Cleveland (?). Most of the laughs come via Destiny (Kaitlin Olson), a near-sighted whale shark, a beluga whale with sonar anxiety (Ty Burrell), and a pair of sea lions (Idris Elba and Dominic West) who spend most of their time tormenting a simple-minded Sisyphus who struggles to share their rock, only to be constantly chased back into the sea.

Indeed, there’s a bleak undertow to Finding Dory that may take young viewers aback. A lonely oyster pines for the mollusc who broke his heart. A deranged sea bird obeys anyone who maintains contact with its flitting eye. The institute is a purgatory filled with windup toys, barnacle-crusted corridors and feeding buckets filled with bobbing sardines.

But the film’s most sobering aspect is also its most inspirational. Director Andrew Stanton delves into the dark recesses of Dory’s memory condition, a narrative that speaks equally to families coping with such similar disabilities as dyslexia and autism. It’s a sincere, frank and ultimately uplifting message, even if delivered by a serviceable sequel lacking the sense of discovery in its original.

John Carter

Behold, the Mushroom of Souls

Grade: B –

Director: Andrew Stanton

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds and Dominic West

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 12 min.

At one point in John Carter, the titular earthling-turned-interplanetary freedom fighter impales—using his entire body—a giant, snarling white ape-like beast. Emerging out the back of the monster, he stands before an audience of green humanoids gathered to watch the blood sport. As Carter, covered in the creature’s cobalt-colored entrails, begins to address the motion-capture, computer-generated crowd, the echoes of Avatar are drowned out only by the rousing call-to-arms Carter bellows in his role like a Martian William Wallace.

First appearing in a 1912 magazine serial, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series has influenced generations of science-fiction, including Star Wars, Superman, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. However, any earnest attempt to render a feature film adaptation of Burrough’s creation has floundered for nearly 80 years. The delay is particularly surprising considering the decades of big screen adapatations that Burroughs’ Tarzan character has enjoyed. Indeed, the path to bring this John Carter to fruition began in 2004 and traversed at least three directors before ending with Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo and WALL-E).

Carter (Taylor Kitsch, Friday Night Lights) is an ex-Confederate soldier from Virginia turned surely Arizona golf prospector circa 1868. Stumbling across a mystical medallion held by omnipotent extraterrestrial being, Carter finds himself teleported to Mars, called Barsoom by its natives. There, less gravity gives Carter superhuman strength and leaping ability, skills that are noticed by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe via motion capture), leader of a race of quadruple-armed, horned humanoids called the Tharks.

Once elevated to warrior status by the Tharks, Carter embarks on a mission to quell the conquest aspirations of Sab Than (Dominic West), who aided by a species of all-seeing shape-shifters called the Therns (headed by Mark Strong). Moreover, Carter becomes smitten with Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), princess of a realm named Helium, and spends most of the film both saving her and trying to spare her from going through with a prearranged marriage to Sab.

But, the final, $250 million, 3-D special effects laden spectacle is, well, a mixed bag. Although adapted largely from A Princess of Mars, Burroughs’ first John Carter novel, Stanton plus screenwriters Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon draw elements from throughout Burroughs’ 11-part Barsoom book series. As a consequence, the plot—already saddled with a cavalcade of obtuse proper names—quickly becomes mired in its narrative muddle.

Kitsch is a capable lead, but while Texas native Collins is a suitable beauty, her acting is as uneven as the British accent that she and—for some mysterious reason—every English-speaking space race in the history of cinema speaks.

The best parts of John Carter are observing the hero’s discovery of both his alien surroundings and his otherworldly powers, along with the repeated flashes whimsy that show the film knows not to take itself too serious. Stanton confirms his skill behind the camera, but as an animated director his acumen in conjuring a digitized universe—which serves him well here for the most part—does not behoove fleshing out the flesh-and-blood characters and other live-action elements. The film’s broad, complicated canvas requires an accessible grandeur that few directors can channel.

The audience yearns for fleeting moments of recognition and clarity, such as a monologue from Strong’s Matai Shang in which he not only deciphers Carter’s home state from hearing his Southern accent but describes the Therns’ eons-long mission of meddling in the affairs of others beings. Otherwise, John Carter is handsome yet hectic, a standard-issue sword and sorcery flick set against an expensive, eye-popping backdrop. Although Burroughs’ stories might be the Rosetta Stone of modern-day sci-fi, the film is like Prince of Persia if it was written by L. Ron Hubbard.

Neil Morris